Minecraft’s latest Java snapshot changes redstone wires a bit

To liven everyone up a little before the weekend comes, Mojang is releasing a new snapshot for Minecraft. This snapshot isn’t a big one, and isn’t adding any surprise features to the Nether Update this time around. Instead, this build focuses on redstone wires, as well as plenty of bug fixes and optimizations. Here’s what you need to know:

• Redstone wires have been tweaked so their behavior is more in line with their appearance. This means redstone wires will attempt to connect to adjacent blocks, and will power adjacent blocks if they’re connected. It also means that redstone wires will now power blocks directly above blocks redstone wires are travelling up.
• Redstone now makes a “cross” shape if it’s not connected to anything. To signify the possibilities of the redstone, lone redstone wires will now be represented by a cross instead of a dot. A small, but nice change.
• Target blocks can now be powered by redstone. The new experimental target block is being added as part of the Nether Update, and can power redstone contraptions depending on where it’s struck by projectiles. It can now be powered by redstone as well, and power can travel through it.
• A very long list of bug fixes, improvements, and more. As we near ever so closer to a potential final release of the Nether Update, Mojang is piling on the bug fixes to make the game as polished as possible. As expected, this snapshot is no different, with a list of improvements far longer than feature changes.

The changes to redstone seem to be perfectly logical, although it’s inevitable that this will break peoples contraptions in some way shape or form. Redstone wizards may need to do a little restructuring to make everything work properly, but going forward this should represent an improvement. Bug fixes and such are always welcome, since the snapshots and betas up to this point have been fairly buggy and broken in some cases (which is expected). Going forward, most snapshots and updates will probably look closer to this than past releases.

If you’re interested, you can check out Mojang’s blog post here for all the details on this snapshot. You can also check out our guide to installing Java Edition snapshots if you wish to cut to the chase.